Buzz, Buzz, Buzz

A Letter from the Editor-in-Chief

Linguists, it is known, love buzzwords. Love, love, love. The funny thing is that while they have a healthy dose of skepticism for buzzwords outside linguistics, they often fall for the silliest of notions that catch on within the field. (I’m looking at you, Syntax.)

So, when I heard whisperings in the hallways at SpecGram Towers about “responsive this” and “responsive that”, I was naturally quite concerned that this would turn out to be Yet Another Framework, which would either be a flash-in-the-pan distraction from Important Work™, or, worse, something that would catch on, requiring and/or allowing everyone to rework their old analyses in the Formalism du Jour®.

Fortunately, it turned out to be some silly “internet” notion, related to “mobile computing” and “smart phones” and “the 21st century” and lots of other useless jibber-jabber. According to the Web Interns—Who keeps feeding them, by the way? They’ll never leave if we keep feeding them!—some of the “pages” on the SpecGram “web site” are now “mobile-friendly” and no longer induce quite as much “eye strain” or some such gibberish. I don’t know what the fuss is all about. If desktop computing* was good enough for my great-grandpappy, it’s good enough for you, you ungrateful whinging whippersnapper.

So, it turns out that we will have to revise all of our existing papers and theories; though “we” refers to the web interns, and all the revising will be formatful, not contentful. The changes will be “rolled out” over the coming “months”, according to the “project manager”.

By the way—speaking of ingratitude and eyestrain—not enough attention is being paid to The Speculative Grammarian Essential Guide to LinguisticsCover Contest. You don’t even have to buy the darn book to participate, and if you win, you get a copy of the book, signed by at least onetwothree four of the authors. What could be finer? Technically, nothing, so get cracking!

* Of course, back in great-grandpappy’s day, desktop computing meant your rolltop had a built-in abacus. Never let minor facts get in the way of a good diatribe.